Another Look at Portals

While we’ve been imagining and devising our own portals for How to Forget the Border Completely, San Francisco artist Jeff Waldman has been creating his own type of imaginative gateway in an endeavour he’s called ‘The Happiness Project’.

Pictured above is Waldman’s first installation called ‘Shut In’, which features a couple interior locks, and a large keyhole that emits a strong light from within.

“The idea is to install small doors, unexplained portals, throughout the city. To start, in San Francisco. These doors would be scaled down to a size that is cognitively possible but whimsically improbable. Tiny ones. Like, Alice Through The Looking Glass, maybe 15-25 inches or so.”

Waldman has been inviting other artists to participate and create their own doors unique to their own imagination and install them in places where they look “as natural as a 16 inch tall weathered oak door can look on the side of parking garage.”

After reading about this via The Daily What, I also came across this project, which is a little more closer to home!

Apparently over the last couple of years, there have been sightings of ‘fairy doors’ in and around Ann Arbor, which, like Waldman’s, are small and inoperable, but vary in themes and decor. These were ‘found’ in the folklore section of the Ann Arbor District Library.

Tons of these ‘fairy doors’ and information can be found here. It was strangely unclear as to who has been producing these, though it seems that a man named Jonathan Wright has been keeping this page constantly up-to-date.

More photos of Waldman’s ‘The Happiness Project’ doors can be found here.

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2 Comments

These little doors are a great way to suggest that there is something cozy in any structure. It reminds me of an image I found a while back consisting of a hidden room that can only be accessed through opening an armoire.